‘So Help Me Todd,’ starring Marcia Gay Harden, springs from a son’s quest for justice

Necessity is the mother of invention – or the father of new television.

At least that’s the case with “So Help Me Todd’s” creator Scott Prendergast. When his mother’s husband disappeared in 2005, “I saw my mother collapsing, very upset, very emotional,” he recalls. “Something I called my ‘Incredible Hulk moment’ just kicked in and I said, ‘We’re going to find this guy.’”

Although he’s not an investigator (just an avid viewer of “Without a Trace”), Prendergast was able to track the man’s movements and find him.

Enter: “So Help Me Todd,” a new CBS drama about a mother/son team solving crimes and closing cases. Marcia Gay Harden plays Margaret, an attorney at a high-powered firm; Skylar Astin plays Todd, her tech-savvy son. She plays by the rules; he doesn’t always. Together, they’re able to get information others might want to hide and use it to close in on their targets.

While Prendergast’s sleuthing was a way to help his mother, it took more than a decade to get the show produced. Stops as an actor on “Silicon Valley” and “Happy Endings” gave him time to work on the script, but he knew he had the touchstones for a series that could work.

“I bought the life rights of eight of my family members – but only for the month of October 2005,” he says. “I paid each of them $10 in cash and made them sign a release. I told them all that someday I would write about this incident. None of them thought much of it.”

Last year, Prendergast got the go-ahead and pared the script. Only he, his mother and her husband made the cut.

“My mother was nervous about the project but she was thrilled that I was succeeding and seemed to be having some success,” he says. “She asked me constantly, ‘Who is playing me? Do I have any say other this?’”

Luckily, she was thrilled with Harden and now calls to see how things are going. She even sent photos of her wardrobe and her home as inspiration. Still, she’s quick to point out, “It’s all fictionalized, of course,” he recalls. “So in case there’s something in the show she doesn’t like, she can say that part is made up.”

Harden – who hasn’t met Prendergast’s mother, due to COVID restrictions – says the show is a great way to view the battle between millennials and baby boomers. “The ideas of how you show up in society aren’t necessarily reflected in the new generation,” she says. “Margaret’s really fighting for him to pay his bills, get out of bed, go to work in the morning. And the good thing is, he’s doing all those things. Part of her journey is that she has to learn to see him for who he is and let him be who he is.”

When Prendergast’s stepfather disappeared, the dutiful son was “massively in credit card debt. I called (mom’s husband’s) credit card (company) and pretended to be him and got an address. We found the house and my mom and I staked that house out for two weeks. Eventually, I broke into that house.”

That “shady” side of the law is one of the things Margaret rails against in “So Help Me Todd.” She also learns how to mine data in a way she never considered. While Prendergast’s mother is a real estate broker, not a lawyer, she appreciated his determination.

“I am not a private detective…though I’d like to be,” Prendergast says.

Because of his writing, “it’s so clear to me who Todd is,” Astin says. “I was excited to tackle that. He’s a bit messier than the other characters I’ve played but I like not being afraid to look silly.”

The real Todd? He, too, was a bit messy. When mom’s husband disappeared, he didn’t have car insurance and he’d hit a taxi “and all the windows exploded. Then I got injured and didn’t have health insurance. And my mother was constantly like, ‘Ugh,’ having to step in and save me and fix my life. And then her life fell apart and I was able to step in and help her.”

When the experience ended, Prendergast decided to move to Hollywood and try his hand in entertainment. “My mother said to me, ‘I believe in you. You can do it. Look what you did for me. If you hadn’t been here, who would have found my husband? You found him. You can do anything. Go to Hollywood, follow your dreams.”

And now, the story continues.

“So Help Me Todd” airs Thursdays on CBS.